Last weekend, I went to Denver to visit my old friend Listle. That’s pronounced Lee-sil and it’s a Norwegian name that, between the spelling and the pronunciation, no one ever gets right. People always think it’s Lisa, even after she’s repeated it five times. When I was 20, Listle (that’s diesel with an “L”) changed my life.
We met during my first day of classes at Colorado Mountain College in Steamboat in 1990. I had failed out of the University of Denver halfway through the final quarter of my freshman year when I had decided that I came to Colorado to ski, not go to school. After ski bumming in Summit County for a year, I ended up at CMC when no one else would take me with my 0.36 grade-point average.
I loved CMC. I never told my dad they call it “See Me Ski” and neglected to mention the six-inches/no classes on a powder day rule that was followed by teachers and students alike.
I met Listle, who was sitting in the front row of Bob Baker’s civics class with thick, long, blond hair like Marcia Brady. Her eyes were wide and innocent, and for some reason I assumed she didn’t speak a lick of English. I introduced myself, speaking loudly the way Americans tend to do with foreigners, as if that would somehow bridge the communication gap.
“SO WHERE ARE YOU FROM?” I yelled, half expecting her to say, “I am Helga from Svee-den.”
“I’m from Evergreen,” she said, laughing.
We became fast friends and ended up sharing a funky, old, two-bedroom apartment in downtown Steamboat. I was pretty fat back then. I guess they call it the “freshman 15,” but whatever it was, I was about as wide as I was tall, like a penguin. I grew up skiing in Vermont and could hold my own on two planks, but I wasn’t exactly fit.
She was. She could rock climb and mountain bike and was just about the most amazing snowboarder I’d ever seen. She dragged me all over the place, and always pushed me to do things I knew nothing about before I met her.
The first time she took me rock climbing, I wore jeans that almost split open as I tried to hoist my short, thick legs over a ledge. She was great on belay. Every time I moved an inch, she’d pull in a foot of slack and basically hoisted me up the short, easy route. She wore these knee-length tights with horizontal black and pink stripes on them and matching pink and black shoes. She had a cool harness and cool chalk bag, and when she climbed, her blond ponytail would swing to and fro. It was a tiny crag in our neighborhood and we’d go there every day. After I learned the route, it got easier. Soon I could do it fluidly, and it reminded me of gymnastics, of mastering a routine.
Listle was a sponsored snowboarder, and in the weeks leading up to the season opening, big brown boxes appeared on our doorstep almost daily. It was all next year’s stuff. She got four snowboards from Sims and an outfit from the North Face that, looking back, was pretty hideous, but at the time I thought was the coolest thing in the world. Her teaching method could be summed up in one statement, a succinct but effective declaration she made one day after it had snowed 8 inches and I was falling all over the place. “I’m not going to wait for you all day,” is all she said. So I chased that long blond ponytail as it flew along behind her, almost like stardust from a magical fairy’s wand.
I fell in love with snowboarding, and after one season with her, I was pretty good at it. Instead of going pro (we mere mortals understand our limits), I followed them around the world, working as an editor at Transworld Snowboarding for four delicious years. Fifteen years later, my life still revolves around snowboarding (or at least that’s what I tell myself when I shell out an absurd amount of money each month to continue to live in Aspen) and I have Listle to thank for that.
The truth is, I despise the “go girl” sorority mentality that unites and drives women in male-dominated sports. One of the reasons I love living in the mountains so much is because I prefer the company of men. But Listle showed me how women can make their own mark with grace and style men don’t even have. I was able to imitate her, to follow that wave of blond as it flowed up and down mountains, leading me to places I never knew I’d go.
Freelance columnist Alison Berkley can be reached at alison@berkleymedia.com.
